


Bête Noire

by KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [15]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Grima knows they got feelings and then uh, M/M, Make an Example of Them, Male Gimurei | Grima, Minor Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Nightmares, Violence, in typical villain that looks like the LI fashion, it's mostly in the background but, uses that against Chrom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Chrom says and the god that wears the face of his best friend smiles. It is too toothy, too wide and white a grin, for such a familiar face standing ankle-deep in this corpse field’s muck.
Relationships: Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648339
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Bête Noire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoominQuartz (IceCreAMS)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/gifts).



“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Chrom says and the god that wears the face of his best friend smiles. It is too toothy, too wide and white a grin, for such a familiar face standing ankle-deep in this corpse field’s muck.

“What’s wrong? I thought meeting in a dream was romantic to your kind.”

“Don’t be absurd.  _ This  _ isn’t a romance.”

“It was to me, once.”

Chrom’s mouth snaps shut. 

He does not look at the slackened, pale faces of his friends in the mud around him. Above all, he does not look at Lissa. The sight of her golden curls splayed and dirtied is as far as he will allow his eyes to wander; Frederick would have had a conniption if he were to see her clothes in such a state.

Instead, Frederick, his right-hand man, is sprawled on his left, face twisted away at an unnatural angle it was never meant to go.

“You don’t deny it.”

“What is there to deny?”

“You have feelings for me.”

“I have feelings for  _ Robin _ .” The words out of his mouth are knives. Chrom tosses them, shoving them deep into this stranger’s flesh. He wonders if gods can bleed in dreams. Is he scared by the depth of his own desire to find out? “You. Are not. Him.”

The Fell Dragon laughs. His hands stretch out to his sides. “My dear Chrom, just because I am not  _ your  _ Robin, does not mean I am not still  _ Robin. _ ”

“You’re a facsimile.”

“Actually, I’m the original.” His boots squelch across the mud. Chrom glances and then hates himself the instant he does as he catches sight of the Fell Dragon’s foot stepping first onto and then into Vaike’s chest. There’s a sick crack; a wet slosh. Then, a burst of dark red and Chrom’s stomach surges in correlation. Acidic bile shoots up his throat. He turns around and slaps a hand over his mouth.

The god even _ laughs  _ with Robin’s voice.

“You’re so easy, Chrom,” he says and sighs like it’s a pity. “What’s that mortal saying? You wear your heart on your sleeve?” 

There’s another  _ crunch  _ and gooey squeeze, but Chrom doesn’t want to see whose body it is. Who was next to Vaike? Miriel? He doesn’t turn around. He has seen enough of war to know the sound of snapped and crushed bones. Somehow, in his dreamscape, the experience is amplified. Worse. 

“Now I wear their hearts on my shoes.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I believe you call it setting an example.”

There’s a moment with no sound at all and it kills Chrom not to look. It hurts to stand with his back turned on his fallen friends’ bodies. He wants to laugh. Nothing about this is funny, but his shoulders shake regardless. “This is a dream, as it always is. Your argument holds no real power. This is hearsay.”

“Are you, the noble Exalt of Ylisse, actually thinking less of  _ me _ for not killing your real friends? You’re running yourself in circles. My argument holds every power. This dream you call fiction is going to be reality.”

“This is not our future.”

“Where do you think I came from, my dear?”

“Stop  _ calling  _ me that!”

Chrom launches himself around, and Robin’s face stretches wide with a smile that he has never seen before and he never wants to see again. His stomach squeezes and squeezes like a hand has fisted the organ and is squeezing it dry. “What are you trying to say? Why are you in my head? You cannot somehow convince me to lay down my Falchion by promising death and destruction. That is the very reason  _ why  _ it is in my hand.”

“Exactly.” 

It’s said so simply, so easily. 

Chrom watches with growing apprehension as the not-Robin kneels and picks up Emmeryn’s body; her head lolls, doll-like and heavy, against his shoulder. 

He hadn’t even known her corpse was  _ there  _ among the others. 

Emmeryn is every bit as he remembers her to be after her fall, down to the bits of stone dust caught in her eyelashes.

“Consider this an encouragement. You all have been so insistent on being agents of your own disaster that you’re hurtling faster and faster towards my rise and return at your own will. Why would I ever tell you to stop?”

“Don’t touch her.”

“Her death was inevitable, Chrom.” A pale finger curls against her cheek. Her white robes and curled blonde hair looks too lovely to be so soiled with mud. “Surely you realize that by now. There’s no point for me to argue when you already so succinctly make an example of the worthlessness of your friends’ lives. You let your own sister die just as she was always meant to die.”

“Stop twisting it. I haven’t made an example out of anyone.”

“You’re going to make an example out of yourself.”

And then he’s no longer there. 

Emmeryn’s body falls back to the ground as Robin-not-Robin plants his boots into the mud in front of Chrom. His fingers are clasped tight around the back of Chrom’s neck, forcing his head forward until their bangs brush together. Something protrudes from Chrom’s gut; he thinks he can see it, even if he can’t feel it. Their mouths are too close together, breathing hard.

“ _ This  _ is why I’m truly in your head: to encourage you to make it a  _ glorious  _ one.”

When Chrom blinks, everything changes. The god no longer wears Robin’s face, but his own: the giant, darkened face of a snarling beast that writhes within its own skin. Grima is all sneering teeth and two long, red eyes on the sides of its snout. Six enormous wings scissor up from its rugged back. 

Chrom is pinned under one of its claws, wriggling to get free as brown, blood-stained teeth open above him. A string of pungent saliva drips onto his cheek. 

_ Go on, Chrom. Die for me. Make an example of your own insignificance. _

And the last thing Chrom sees before he wakes up, as always, is the rippled flesh of the back of the Fell Dragon’s throat.

**Author's Note:**

> is it just a nightmare?? is Grima playing with Chrom's mind??? hAHA great questions
> 
> MY HUSBAND GAVE ME YET ANOTHER AMAZING BAD THINGS HAPPEN BINGO PROMPT: "Make an Example of Them" with Chrom 'and the others' (his words) and I just...couldn't get the idea of Grima being a complete asshole to Chrom because he KNOWS Chrom's like 102% motivated by his friends out of my mind. u feel me? 
> 
> so is this JUST a dream?? probably not. probably Grima being jerkish. can Grima even invade dreams?? ANOTHER GREAT question. ur on a roll
> 
> anyway, happy belated 8th anniversary to probably one of my favorite DS games ever, _Fire Emblem: Awakening_. sorry this is a day late. sorry it's nightmare angst.
> 
> if you want to request your own bad things happen bingo prompt fill, [take your pick](https://krisseycrystal.tumblr.com/post/615974797476872192/rated-m-fandom-fire-emblem-awakening-prompt). i've still got some left!


End file.
